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Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

blog.eq8.eu

111–120 of 346 posts

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#111
" Long story short some decent friendly developers were highly criticized over minor jokes they say on social media.

    I’m not going to name that language as it would just spawn a fire of outrage comments from that community. It would just prove my point but at the same time I’m not suicidal.
" who would that be?

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#112
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think an all-in-one framework is an advantage? As soon as you want to switch something out you end up fighting the framework and the tutorials. Better to start with dedicated libraries that each do one thing - it's inevitably where you're going to end up. (Not that I'd consider an untyped ecosystem in the first place, especially one as fond of "magic" (e.g. monkeypatching) as rails. I have sympathy for jus…

I think the types argument is bullshit but it's just my opinion. Do python or ruby devs really feel they are less productive than java devs because they have no types? What I see happening is languages like java becoming more dynamic (var etc) and languages like ruby/python getting better IDEs (auto completion will continue to improve).

I'm absolutely terrified of refactoring in big python, ruby, or javascript codebases, because there's less chance that I'll be able to find all the side effects of changing something. Tests help, but maintaining high-enough test coverage over possible code paths can be harder and less useful than working with a type system and writing fewer tests.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#113
post #35

I mean... Let's pause for a minute and remove the year, and remove the language / framework. What are we trying to accomplish? If we know something really well and there are enough developers to support an ecosystem and the talent pool in your is big enough just use whatever you want. PHP in 2018? SURE. C++ in 2018? SURE (You masochist) Rails in 2018? Youre damn right I would. GO in 2018? OK. Fine. Whatever. This is…

"C++ in 2018? SURE (You masochist)" I know this is tongue in cheek, but if one is doing anything related to real time graphics programming I'm not aware of any good alternatives.

There is a growing Rust game development community [0] but of course C++ still has the edge.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/rust_gamedev/

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#114
To me, every framework or web oriented language out there should have a big tutorial similar to

https://railstutorial.org/book

because it covers a lot of things regarding classic everyday web development which is extremely useful to beginners. So just for the existence of that book I'd say yeah, Rails is still relevant.

There is also this one for flask which builds an web app from start to finish for people who like Python.

https://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial...

A lot of ruby books features the design and development of complete medium sized application from start to finish in various domain.

That's the kind of thing beginners should learn instead of 'Docker' or 'React' because they've heard everybody constantly talking about the latter.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#115
The need for a build environment itself limits Ruby deployment to developers. This becomes a real problem for end user apps and expecting end users to compile is perhaps expecting too much. And now you need a build environment in deployment.

And with this comes potential dependency hell, an app like Discourse pulls in over 140 dependencies. This means either you are a Ruby developer who can debug compile or version conflict issues quickly or have a lot of time to go down various rabbit holes.

Many casually suggest Docker but this simply doubles complexity as now not only does the end user need to know Ruby but also Docker. This means understanding networking, port forwarding, volumes, state separation and single process environments just for starters before we even get to the app.

For in house apps none of these are deal breakers but one wishes language developers thought more seriously about the deployment story.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#116
I'm not a web or compiler/interpreter dev so this is probably a noob question but here it goes anyway. If the main complain about ruby is that it is slow then why not trying to make it faster? I don't know how easy or feasible that is but is there an effort towards that?

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#117

I mean... Let's pause for a minute and remove the year, and remove the language / framework. What are we trying to accomplish? If we know something really well and there are enough developers to support an ecosystem and the talent pool in your is big enough just use whatever you want. PHP in 2018? SURE. C++ in 2018? SURE (You masochist) Rails in 2018? Youre damn right I would. GO in 2018? OK. Fine. Whatever. This is…

...our jobs are to make stuff that works in a predictable, less risky way. Do that. This is very true, but it doesn't mean "Use the thing that's worked in the past because that's less risky." Languages get better and tooling improves, and if you're still using one that isn't keeping up then you're increasing risk. These days if your chosen language doesn't have things like strong typing, interfaces, good debugging to…

>> You shouldn't jump from one language to another every few months, but you should keep a close eye on what other languages are doing and ask yourself if switching would improve the code you write.

Shouldn't that last sentence be "... if switching would improve the end product or service you are delivering." The focus should be on what people are paying you for. Better code doesn't always mean a better product, or be a smart business decision.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#118

I'm not a web or compiler/interpreter dev so this is probably a noob question but here it goes anyway. If the main complain about ruby is that it is slow then why not trying to make it faster? I don't know how easy or feasible that is but is there an effort towards that?

Absolutely. Ruby has had major performance improvements. Plus there's also JRuby for those that want access to the Java ecosystem. Alternatively we can detect bottlenecks and re-write those in a different language, such as Rust.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#119

RoR is relevant as long as the community is active, as long as there is job demand (see crossover, Stackoverflow, etc.). It is an excellent framework with gems to act as plugins (rack middleware) to serve websockets, forums, admin interfaces all with a few lines of configuration. Google, Microsoft, Facebook all maintain Ruby libraries in GitHub. So as long as you are doing Joe's textile website, it is the right tool.…

It's also good for new projects & new startups.

Re: Is Rails still relevant in 2018?

#120
post #9

Of course it is. The question is kind of silly. For basically any startup, my advice would be: unless and until you can credibly explain a genuine reason why you can't use Rails - use Rails. I'm not some crazy fanboy but until someone can actually name a seriously competitive, batteries-included, all-in-one framework* which delivers everything, or even most of, what Rails does - it is very relevant and you ignore it…

Share code between client and server side to get client side prediction and server side validation.
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